Midnight Tales

Midnight Tales is an American horror-suspense anthology comic book series created by Wayne Howard that was published by Charlton Comics from 1972 to 1976. The book was "hosted" by Professor Coffin (a.k.a. the Midnight Philosopher) and his niece Arachne (the book followed a standard formula where each issue's first story was a framing sequence divided up among the other stories). The setting, Xanadu University, was a tie-in with the Charlton series E-Man. Charlton took the unusual step of giving Howard a "created by" credit on each issue's cover, providing a precedent for such credits eventually becoming common years later beginning with DC's Vertigo imprint. Charlton writer/editor Nick Cuti described Howard's credit being granted because the book, "... was his idea, his concept, his everything". In addition, each issue shared a theme: "One time it would be blob monsters, and I wrote three stories about blob monsters, and another time it was vampires ... and that sort of thing". Howard penciled and inked every cover and virtually every story, and occasionally scripted stories as well. According to critic Mark Andrew: Old dude and his sexy niece traipse across the countryside, bumping into oddball characters who invariably have a story to tell.... Sadly, since Charlton didn't want to do anything that'd offend your average nine-year-old, you can feel this book fighting against the uber-restrictive comics code. Kinda sad, really. What is good, however, are the artists in this book, easily the equal of anyone workin' at Marvel or DC at the time. You got Wayne Howard ... probably the most deft practitioner of the Wally Wood school ever.